Legal Profession

About once a month, we receive a solicitation to purchase some made-up “honor” with a certificate suitable for framing designating the “best” or “top” lawyers in my practice area. Almost all are phony vanity distinctions for sale to anyone willing to pay the inflated price, but signifying nothing. I either toss them in the “round … Continue Reading

This morning on her way to work, a paralegal in our office was injured when someone rear-ended her car on the way to work. When she was waiting for a CT scan in the hospital emergency department, she sent us a text reporting that she had already been called on her cell phone by two … Continue Reading

Lawyers and paralegals who had previously worked at personal injury firms that advertise heavily on television, billboards and bus placards have told me many tales about the business model of those firms.
They have told me how lawyers may be responsible for 600 cases at a time, with 100 or more in litigation.
They have told me … Continue Reading

A few times every year, parents of college students considering law school ask me to talk with their offspring about which Georgia law schools they should consider. Before responding to that question, there is always a conversation about why they want to go to law school, priorities in life, and other options for life and … Continue Reading

No matter how many years a lawyer has practiced, there is no end to the need for exposure to bright new ideas from the best lawyers around the United States.
Over the past year, I had the opportunity to serve as chair of the Motor Vehicle Collision, Highway and Premises Liability Section of the American Association … Continue Reading

Versions of this article were published by Ken Shigley as a president’s column in the Georgia Bar Journal (August 2011) and as the chairman’s column in the American Association for Justice Motor Vehicle Collision, Highway & Premises Liability Section Newsletter (Spring 2016).

James[1] had great unrealized potential. Son of a minister in another Southern state, he … Continue Reading

A lawyer’s calling
Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.
– Isaiah 1:17
It was a Sunday in December 1971, at my grandparents’ home in Mentone, Alabama, halfway down the hundred-mile-long plateau from Chattanooga to Gadsden that is Lookout Mountain. Within a … Continue Reading

Justice Antonin Scalia
The one time I met the late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, he talked about how much he loved hunting quail. It is good that he was able to spend his last day in this mortal realm on a quail hunt.
Back in 2012, when I was president of the State Bar of Georgia, Justice … Continue Reading

U.S. Courthouse, Atlanta
Dax Lopez is a judge of the State Court of DeKalb County, nominated by lame-duck President Obama to fill a vacant seat on the U.S. District court in Atlanta, as an apparent bipartisan compromise to fill the seat with Republican approval. Surprisingly for an Obama nominee, Judge Lopez is a conservative Republican, a longtime … Continue Reading